VOY:Spirit Folk or "PaddyWorld"

[CharlesPhipps]

I assumed synthehol is actually meant to be shit.

Scotty certainly thinks so.

[Robovski]

I'm sure Neelix is getting real stuff in or someone is brewing hootch. Next week: The Voyager's computers start acting weird as the gel packs are infected with yeast and are fermenting...

[FaxModem1]

Synthehol allows you to get drunk, but if you need to get sober, you can quickly sober up. That's very important on a starship that may need to get to battle and you have a bunch of drunk off their ass crew members.

[Morgaine]

Obviously you can't fob off a true Scotsman with fake alcohol, of course Scotty would hate it.

[Beastro]

The flagship nonsense has always pissed me off ever since I was little.

To be fair, "flagship" can also mean, "the finest, largest, or most important one of a series, network, system, chain, etc." That might be giving the writers too much credit, I admit...

Typical ignorant people in the entertainment industry assuming the word has the same meaning in the military as it does in their corner of the world?

Makes sense.

[TGLS]

The other problem with that interpretation is the Enterprise doesn't get commanded by an Admiral except briefly in TMP...

[Deledrius]

I assumed synthehol is actually meant to be shit.

Scotty certainly thinks so.

It's hard to tell. Everyone always goes full hipster when anything synthetic or replicated comes out, despite the fact that by TNG it's unlikely most of them even grew up around anything else. Scotty definitely seems like the type to be a drink snob.

[Dînadan]

The other problem with that interpretation is the Enterprise doesn't get commanded by an Admiral except briefly in TMP...

That’s one thing, I never understood why Picard wasn’t at least a Commodore (although that could partly be down to the rank of Commodore apparently dissapearing sometime between TOS and TNG). Being a Commodore would have given him seniority over other captains in the fleet (I suppose technically he’d get it by default anyway when the Enterprise engaged in fleet actions unless an Admiral was involved, but it would have been nice to have at least some token of setting him above the regular captains), but without the obstructive beuracrat/‘only captains a desk’ connotations that Admiral carries within Trek fiction.


Thinking about what Chuck brings up about Riker’s character arc in ‘Best of Both Worlds’, it might have been interesting if the writers had kept Riker as captain after that episode concluded and had him as running the day to day ship operations and standard captain stuff, and had promoted Picard to Admiral and had him stay onboard to fill various senior functions (commanding fleet actions, focusing more on the diplomat side ofvthings, running important first contacts, etc).

[Dînadan]

I assumed synthehol is actually meant to be shit.

Scotty certainly thinks so.

It's hard to tell. Everyone always goes full hipster when anything synthetic or replicated comes out, despite the fact that by TNG it's unlikely most of them even grew up around anything else. Scotty definitely seems like the type to be a drink snob.

Would that be why Picard is able to knock the glass of green back in one swig? Partly because he’s old enough to be from a pre-synthahol generation/the generation when it was first invented or becoming widespread, and partly because he’s from a traditional French winemaking family so had been drinking actual alcoholic wine on a regular basis for most of his life before joinging Starfleet.

[Madner Kami]

The other problem with that interpretation is the Enterprise doesn't get commanded by an Admiral except briefly in TMP...

That’s one thing, I never understood why Picard wasn’t at least a Commodore (although that could partly be down to the rank of Commodore apparently dissapearing sometime between TOS and TNG). Being a Commodore would have given him seniority over other captains in the fleet (I suppose technically he’d get it by default anyway when the Enterprise engaged in fleet actions unless an Admiral was involved, but it would have been nice to have at least some token of setting him above the regular captains), but without the obstructive beuracrat/‘only captains a desk’ connotations that Admiral carries within Trek fiction.

Based on the fact that Starfleet vaguely follows a US Navy Rank System: Commodore isn't really much of a rank, rather a functional specification for the most part. It designates a senior officer, usually a captain, who commands multiple ships/a flotilla, much like whatever rank an officer is holding, as long as he is the commander of a ship, he's adressed as Captain. The actual rank of Commodore appeared and disappeared from the US Navy several times. As Gene was a part of the army in WWII, he served during a time where Commodore was an actual rank, but it was removed soon after the war. The last time it appeared in the US Navy was in 1980, but it practically vanished overnight and was replaced by "Rear Admiral" as it caused confusion due to the long service of "Commodore" as a "functional" rank.

That should explain why the rank of Commodore vanished from Star Trek as well. By the time TNG came around, the Commodore didn't exist anymore in reality and hasn't been for a long time, while Rear Admirals were a thing for almost a decade, thus likely being very unfamiliar and thus unthought-of term.